Chemical Warfare

Senator, from The Toilet Story, is one of my oldest friends - we've known each other since middle school. When he and I were in high school, we were both very active in our student government and both held an office. This meant that anytime there was an event for students, like a dance or a social, he and I were there and had a hand in planning and executing the event.

Senator and I did a huge amount of work for homecoming our senior year. We wanted that night to be spectacular, and we were determined that everyone would know that we were responsible for it. Looking back, I can't believe how important we thought this was - but in our high school minds, it was absolutely vital to our social standing and professional futures that we put on a great evening.

Of course, I remember precisely nothing about the event itself. All I can recall now is what happened just before and just after the homecoming dance began, and how lucky we were not to be hospitalized with a terminal case of stupidity.

The homecoming dance was to be held in the cafeteria. Our high school was very large, with about 2,500 students altogether (keep in mind that the town I lived in at the time, twenty miles away, had only 1,000 people living there - the school was two and a half times larger than the hellhole I lived in for eighteen years), so the cafeteria was accordingly massive. The ceilings were something like twenty-five feet high, which is an important detail for later.

We wanted balloons. Tons and tons of balloons. Senator and I spent probably an hour at the nearby Winn-Dixie (if you're unfamiliar with Winn-Dixie, it's a grocery store for people with ten teeth or less) draining two of their helium tanks to fill all of the balloons we insisted we needed for the dance. We had, of course, given no thought to how we were going to get hundreds of inflated balloons four miles down the road back to the school. I think we ended up stuffing both of our cars full and then tying the rest to our roofs. We were a huge traffic hazard, but damn it, there were going to be so many balloons and everyone would love them.


When we got back to the cafeteria, our student government advisor was mightily impressed with the number of balloons we had acquired (and slightly worried as to how we had gotten them back without being able to see out of any side of either car). Our advisor told us to let them go to float up to the ceiling, and then she ran off on some errand. We released all of the balloons to float up to the ceiling. It was pretty.

When she came back, with two fistfuls of thin ribbons, she was pissed. It then occurred to us that maybe we had misunderstood her, and she quickly confirmed that suspicion. Instead of tying ribbon to each balloon, as it turned out she had actually said we should do, we had just released them to the high ceiling above with no way to get them back down. A couple of very angry janitors echoed her sentiments and we were ordered to retrieve the balloons somehow.

So, instead of going to the homecoming game, Senator and I spent a couple hours trying to get the damn balloons back down. We each taped three yardsticks end-to-end and put a wad of tape on the far side of each. Then we found a pair of ladders and started picking the balloons off of the ceiling one by one.

By the time we finished, people were starting to arrive for the dance. Senator and I were sulking at this point over having to destroy our decorations and went outside to collect money for the dance's entry fee.

It's kind of funny how we were dead set on having the perfect dance, and now I remember absolutely nothing about it. I guess it must have gone okay. Eventually, things died down and everyone left. Senator and I stayed behind to clean up.

For a bunch of high school kids, the dance attendees hadn't really made much of a mess - a fact for which we were very thankful. The cleanup process went fairly smoothly and very quickly. Soon, there was just one last thing to clean out before we could go home: the ice bowl.

Senator and I took the giant bowl filled with ice cubes and dumped it into a toilet normally reserved for the cafeteria staff. The ice, of course, just sat there and didn't move.

In retrospect, this was not actually a problem. So what if the ice was just sitting there? It was Friday, nobody would be there until Monday, so the ice could just melt over the weekend. There was no issue there whatsoever.

That's not how our little high school brains worked, though. In our minds, we had seriously messed that toilet up and needed to get the ice out right now. Senator and I took turns peeing on it, but that only made a tiny dent. We tried to flush it a couple of times, but nothing happened. We started, inexplicably, to panic.

It was then we noticed a few cleaning supplies nearby. Immediately, we each picked up a bottle and poured the contents over the ice. Yet again, nothing happened.

Now we were truly stumped. How the hell were we going to get this ice down the toilet? Nothing we had tried up to that point had worked, and we had emptied the only two bottles nearby with no effect.

"Maybe we could break it up with a stick."

"Let's find some more stuff to pour on it."

"What if we layered toilet paper on top of it and set it on fire to melt the ice underneath?"

As we bounced ideas back and forth off of one another, each one getting progressively stupider, we each started coughing a bit. Not only that, but our eyes were starting to water. Senator looked at the newly empty bottle I was holding: Clorox bleach. I looked at his: ammonia.

I'm not sure what it says about us that we were too stupid to realize that the ice would have melted on its own over the course of the next two days, but that we knew enough chemistry to immediately realize we had just mixed up a batch of very toxic chlorine gas.

The ice suddenly seemed like much less of a concern, and we got the hell out of there as quickly as we could. Looking back, I can't believe how idiotic we were and how dangerous that was. Not only is chlorine gas deadly, but mixing ammonia and bleach in unequal portions can potentially create nitrogen trichloride or hydrazine, both of which are highly explosive. I'm not sure if either one is really all that volatile while inside a toilet, but still, it wasn't a good idea by any stretch.

After Senator and I got outside and got some fresh air, we agreed that it'd probably be a good idea to keep what had happened to ourselves. And, believe it or not, the ice melted all by itself over the weekend and the toilet was just fine. Sparkling clean, too, I bet.